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Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Disclaimer

Spoilers abound in these posts, if you
haven’t read the books and will get upset by finding out what happens just
stop.

This is also not a recap, if you want a
recap go to Lexicanium.

What
The Black Library says about the book

As the flames of treachery spread outwards
through the Imperium, Horus mobilises those forces who are loyal to him, and
plots to subvert or destroy those who stand agaist him. A battle is being
fought for the heart and soul of all the Imperial forces – the Astartes, the
Imperial Army, the Titan Legions and more. In this epic story, author Graham
McNeill tells the story of the civil war on Mars, and the genesis of the Dark
Mechanicum.

What
the book is really about?

First off, don’t read this book when
you are tired (or if you are a bit dim)

There are no less than 5 major
divergent story lines with associated characters, and keeping track of who is
who, and where they are up to is one of the charms of this book. (if you have
trouble with mechanicum, do not try Game of thrones)

Ok, so five major story lines,
interdependent but mostly independent of each other.

Story
one – The questing Knight dude

Maven is a Knight of Tarantus, a group
of noble dudes who drive around big warmachines and, well, act like Knights for
14th century fables about knights.

Kaban Machine hungry!

I won’t say he’s the most complex
character in the history of literature, and his story is quite a simple one.
There is an explosion the blows up a nuclear reactor, during the lead up to
this explosion Maven encounters a giant kill bot (that we later find is called
the Kaban Machine).

Maven quickly sums up its an AI, and
that is a bad thing to the mechanicum. The rest of his story involves tracking
down the Kaban Machine with his best mate, disobeying orders, and blowing up
the machine at the heroically appropriate time.

It’s a simple “I MUST SLAY THE BEAST”
story, but that was good enough for Beowulf I guess.

Story
two – Titan legion vs Titan Legion

Fanboi alert!

I really liked Adeptus Mechanicus the
boardgame, so I have a soft spot for the Titan legions. (Even if Legio
Metallica has now been removed from canon for legal reasons).

This was fun, stupid, but fun

This story focuses in on the aging
commander of the Legio Tempestus (Storm Lord Cavalerio) and his legions
conflict with Legio Mortis.

Right now I will point out one of my
great bugbears with all of 40k/30k and that is names. Legio Mortis are the bad
guys, WHAT A SHOCK, the death legion turn out to be a bunch of evil shits. Ok,
this isn’t as bad as Fabius Bile and Abaddon (so, your name means hell….. shady
dude) but its still really obvious who the bad guys are.

Anyway, two cool things to note about
this story. One is the Storm lords’ transition from being just a modified
human, to living in an amniotic tank all the time. It’s nice and sci-fi, and
akin to the navigators of dune and other “giving yourself over” stories. I
liked it, but felt they could have done a little more with it.

The other cool bit is the titan battle
at the end of the story. The first Titan engagement is a let-down, but the
finale is pretty awesome. The writer conveys the colossal scale of the
conflict, while keeping the tension and desperation high. Very nice action
scenes.

Story
three – The Dork Mechanicum

Not gonna lie, this is probably the
weakest story of the whole bunch. Kelbor-Hal is the fabricator General and a
colossal douche. There is a whole arc about him and his cronies doing dirt
deeds to win Horus’s favour and open up “SEKRETS BEST LEFT SEKRET”.

Kelbor-Hal and all his cronies are
approaching caricature levels of evil. The secret tech they long for has been
sealed away by the Emperor, and its pretty much “Insert daemon warp thing into
tech” technology.

I get that these guys are meant to be
dogmatic fundamentalists, but they really are very ham fisted about it all.

The highlight of this story is probably
the catelgue of atrocities they unleash over Mars. It’s bordering on cartoonish
the number of experimental new ways they develop to kill people, but it makes
for an interesting read and brings home the scale of the conflict quite nicely.

Story
four – The “Good Guy” Mechanicum

For a given value of “good” that is.

Even the loyalist Mechanicum are
inhuman slave lords suffering from chronic cases of megalomania. Koriel Zeth,
Adept of the Magma city is the protagonist here, and she’s the kind of person
who will happily kill a thousand psykers in an experiment.

The highlight of this story is the “betrayal
of Mars” by the Imperial Fists. The fists show up, and the loyalist Mechanicum
are all “YES, WE IS SAVED” and all they do is hit the Marine armour and weapons
production lines, steal everything that’s no nailed down, and then bugger off.
The loyalists feel well and truly bummed after this.

Bonus points for “The large charge of
the knights at Magma City” and “Zeth vs the Assassin” as those are nice epic
moments in the story.

I also like that they lose, badly, and
totally.

Story
Five – Dalia and the Dragon

This is the main story I guess? I
suppose you could consider Dalia the main protagonist of the story, even though
she has little impact on the wider story. This is an ensemble book, but I do
feel her arc is the one we are meant to identify with the most.

First of all, she is not from Mars, so
we see the Mechanicum through her eyes. Basic features of the society are
tastefully given the “basil exposition” treatment by having a niave off-world
noob show up who needs to have it all explained.

It’s an old trick in sci-fi, but ti
works here.

She’s also “SPECIAL” with a capital
Spec!

We quickly discover that Dalia has a
latent psychic ability that allows her to figure stuff out with technology
extremely quickly, shes a savant, and with no real technical training she
quickly solves the Mechanicum equivalent of a Gordian knot.

But, that’s only the start of her arc.
After a horrific run in with a failed experiment with psykers (Thanks ZETH!)
she starts to dream of a Dragon caged beneath Mars.

The Dragon is most likely the C’tan
Void Dragon, who is one of the great UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS of the 40k universe.

And the Mechanicum worship it….. crazy
bastards.

After an encounter with otherworldly
geometry that Lovecraft would be proud of, she settles in for a long haul as
guardian of the evil dragon monster of Mars.

I guess even the Emperor cannot kill a
C’tan.

All in all Dalia’s story is engaging
enough, and she’s an interesting character. But nothing saves the day, and in
the end she hides out for the entire rest of the war in a cave.

Why
are there humans in my book about super powered Space Marines?

Oddly, in a book with next to no Space
Marines there are remarkably few “humans”.

Everyone in the story is either
cybernetically altered, a psyker, or a marine.

MVP
– The ensemble of techno assistants.

Dalia’s cohorts are quite a neat little
bunch and I like how the writer gave them all quite different characters.
Caxton is a honest young man who falls for Dalia, which makes her hermitage at
the end a little more poignant. Mellicin initially comes across as a grumpy old
cow, but is revealed to be a bit more than that. Severine, the draughter
produces one of the really sad personal tragedy moments of the story. Zouche,
the Tyrion Lannister of engineers, also has a bitter sweet story about his
origin and what being a dwarf in a genetically obsessed society is like.

Finally, Rho-Mu 31, the cyborg killing
machine assigned to protect Dalia has arguably the high point of dialogue in
the book when he cracks a joke. It’s wonderfully dark and out of the blue and
turns, what could have been a caricature into a character.

Worst
Character – The Dork Mechanicum cronies

All of them, so hammy, so moustache
twirly. I really wanted a little more complexity from the villains, but then
again, this is a Horus Heresy novel.

Why
the Emperor is a giant douche

I still find it hard to digest how the
Emperor treated Mars as such a special case when it came to religion. In most
places he cast down idols and banned worship. On Mars, he fostered it.

Heck, he even imprisoned a C’tan on
Mars and let worship of that damned thing continue.

Also, how busy must one be to let the
armoury of your empire fall when it’s in the same system as your capital. This
seems remarkably short sighted and stupid.

Moustache
twirling evil-bastard award – Kelbor-Hal

Dark Mechanicum?

He finally gets his wish and he unveils
the secret tech of secret, and his calls his new group the “Dark Mechanicum”.

I would have preferred if one of the
opposing Mechanicum leaders coined the phrase. Kelbor-Hal should have referred
to his own as the “True Mechanicum”. Dark Mechanicum is just so damn hammy.

The
writing – technical review and evaluation

This is quite a good book I think, one
of the better ones. Not as good as some of the Dan Abnett works, but a good
solid story, pretty good characters and a story that mattered. Solid, but not
special.

That said, I found it a lot better than some of the other books reviewed so far.